Getting
Started with LaTeX on unix

1. What you'll find here

This document attempts to provide simple practical directions for linguists
at Penn who want to use LaTeX on our unix machines (babel, unagi, linc,
etc.). In the interests of simplicity it does not go into complications
or alternative possibilities. (See the LaTeX
for Linguists page for more complete information).

2. How to use LaTeX

Here are the commands you should use to format LaTeX files from the
unix prompt. But emacs actually provides a special ``tex-mode'' with commands
tailored to editing LaTeX files. Some of these commands are also given
here.

Using emacs, create a file containing the text of your document.
(See below for a sample). Give the file a name that ends in ``.tex'', for
example first.tex.Save your file (with control-X control-S,
or quit emacs) before going on to the next step.

To format your document: latex first.tex
This creates a file called first.dvi, which is a binary file containing
the formated version of your document. (It also creates some other files
of no immediate interest). In emacs, you can cause this command to be run
by typing control-C control-F.

To convert your document to a PostScript file: dvips first.dvi
This creates a file called first.ps.

To print your document: lpr first.ps
(Use lpr -Paries first.ps if necessary). If you can print without
explicitly specifying a printer, you can use control-C control-P
to print from inside emacs.

Alternately, you can print your document in one step, without
creating a postscript file: dvips -f first.dvi | lpr

If you make changes your document (the .tex file),
you must do all the above steps again.

HINT: You don't need to type the file suffix for any of the above commands,
except emacs; for example, you can view your file just by typing xdvi first
I included the suffixes above to indicate which file each command operates
on.

3. A test file

Type the following file exactly as it appears (or, you may prefer to
cut-and paste it if you have the capability). Do not confuse forward with
backward slashes, or capital with lowercase letters. (It is ok to have
additional spaces where there are some, or to start a new line anywhere
you see a space). If you can get it to format, display on the screen, and
print, you have mastered the process of formatting a LaTeX document.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
This is a test \LaTeX\ document.
\end{document}

4. Customize your environment

Next, you need to get ready to reate your own documents. The first and
all-important
step is to prepare a place for definition (``style'') files that you will
be using over and over. These extend the capabilities of LaTeX and adapt
it to linguistic (or other) style conventions. You must also tell TeX/LaTeX
where you put them, as follows:

Create a subdirectory in your home directory, named something like
texstyles. You can do this with the command mkdir texstyles.

Use emacs to edit your .cshrc file, and add the following
line: setenv TEXINPUTS .:$HOME/texstyles:

Log off and log back on for the settings to take effect.

Once you've done all this, you can create your own LaTeX documents in
any directory, and use your style files with them. So don't put
your documents in the same directory as the style files!

5. A real sample file

In order to learn what to put in your LaTeX documents, I recommend
that you read through the beginning of some book on LaTeX, and especially
that you look at the documentation for the linguistics example package
gb4e and the tree package qtree. But you're probably
going to go ahead and just copy someone's paper and use it as an example
anyway-and fortunately, that's not a bad way to figure out LaTeX. The following
just might be enough to get you started (but I doubt it).

% Anything on a line after a `%' gets ignored by TeX
% Curly braces {, } are used for grouping
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
% This line requests non-standard packages (which you must make available)
\usepackage{gb4e,qtree}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
{\large \bf Your title, large and bold. } \\ % use \\ to end centered lines
{\large Your name (not bold). }
\end{center}
All your text goes down here.\footnote{Footnote text goes here}.
Leaving a blank line starts a paragraph. Otherwise newlines
are
ignored. Plain text (not containing certain characters that
have special meaning to TeX) appears more or less as it is typed,
but lines are collected into paragraphs.
\emph{italics,} {\bf bold,} {\large larger} or {\small smaller} type.
Subscripts$_i$ and superscripts$^{i, j}$.
\section{Linguistics-style examples}
The commands in this section are defined by the packages
\emph{gb4e} and \emph{qtree.}
\begin{exe}
\ex\label{rem1} Example.
\ex \Tree [.S [.NP the dog ] \qroof{etc.}.VP ]
\end{exe}
You can refer to the example number (\ref{rem1}).
\end{document}

6. Some things you will need
soon

LATEX can do all
sorts of fancy stuff. Here's some of the stuff that's actually worth the
trouble, and that you'll probably want to do pretty soon.

the gb4e package provides a way to do word-aligned glosses.

There are commands that control the size of the margins.

There are specialized fonts, like IPA and Cyrillic.

The ``verbatim'' mode is easy to use, and it the quickest (and dirtiest)
way to line up things in columns.

You've probably heard about BibTeX, the bibliography support facility.

TEX's greatest strength is that it's easy to extend
by defining custom commands. If you find yourself typing (almost) the same
thing over and over again, it's time to look into this.

To learn how to do these, consult a good book on LaTeX, and/or
take a look at the LaTeX
for Linguists webpage for further pointers.